Foreclosure

red barn door stands open

flapping against unforeseen forces

graying beneath cold Virginia skies

*

a tattered corner of Dawn's blue-bird apron

waves from the clothesline,

swaying with the promise of one last dance

with my Uncle Gordon

one last kiss before the wedding

as morning whispered, “Love Me Tender”

*

Robins won’t be back for quite a spell

nor will I

nor will Dawn

nor will Uncle Gordon

*

bulldozers nose about the place

replacing ears of golden corn

with coughs of mud and charcoal smoke

*

no one ploughs the soil

or takes a stand

or hears the squealing

as the hunter green valley

burns to ash,

caustic as asphalt

*

the wishing well ran dry as Uncle Gordon’s mouth

without his sweet tea with lemon stirred into big ice

or a Pabst Blue Ribbon if

Sunday was still a day away and

the general store had turned a small profit

despite hurricane season spitting up seeds

*

a fractured rake

snakes through the tall wheat-colored blades of winter grass

untouched by Uncle Gordon’s hands

going on six years now

his favorite hat and overalls

cling to the white pine fence

draped over a copper nail

slumping from the wait

*

said he’d be back

before dusk

before his I do's

slipped into shadow

far afield of gaping doors

and stumbled

into memory

*

returned a man o' war

*

he'd up and joined without telling a body

fighting for our country was

fighting for our home,

our land

*

he gave us that

and letters

in shaky longhand --

what words he'd written

even as the war found his foxhole

found us in a hole

of his own making

*

Dawn can’t let go

of what Uncle Gordon couldn’t bring himself to say

*

she knows only too well

I would never

say a word against him

even now,

knowing what was to come

*

he was there for me when no one else was

like the day I fell hard and broke a tooth and

skinned my knees, and bled

but not because I'd fallen

*

Uncle Gordon was dad

and mom to me

always doing right by me

long before he found his heart

strung up by Dawn's glorious light

*

he knew like a father knows

I was first to fall in love

first to taste its noxious disappointment

first to bury the biting resentment

first to bury a seed that wouldn’t blossom

and Uncle Gordon tended to me

like a seedling from his own sacred garden

*

these days

no one snaps sugar snaps

on the front porch

and an army—mason jars boasting my relations' fingerprints

and the secrets of the seasons,

each labeled by hand and

lacquered by cobwebs—stands witness

alongside dented cardboard boxes of sprawling holiday decorations,

hand-painted glass ornaments

and frayed strings of colored lights,

and that stash of silver dollars Granddad got for being a good driver,

and a jumble of inventions that never squinted in the sunlight beyond the cellar

*

buyers blink away winter’s glare

never touch the earth with callused hands

don’t sing for strength like Granddad did

and Uncle Gordon did

and his brother did

before that fall that cost him all

*

no, the buyers don’t know

don’t care

what it is to take root

in family-tilled soil

to belong to this earth

and to give back to it

***

Copyright © 03/03/2024 by Christy Munson. All rights reserved.